SciScore pilot with Karger Journals

Authors coming from Karger are encouraged to obtain SciScore reports and include them in the submission documents. The intent of the report is to point out errors (e.g., github repository is set to private) or methodological deficiencies (e.g., authors forget to specify the sex of animals used). The higher the score, the more complete the methods section in terms of the known aspects of rigor and transparency (blinding, randomization, data deposition etc.). SciScore is like a “spell check” for methods not a substitute for peer review.

 

Authors workflow:

 

Step 1

You were probably redirected here from our partner website. Go to SciScore.com

Step 2

Log in using the ORCID option (free access)

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step 3

Copy • Paste • Submit

Paste your methods section into the tool (add the data and code availability sections if those are separate).

If you already have a table, you may simply copy and paste it into the box. SciScore will attempt to read the table as a sentence. There is no current separate spot for tables.

Step 4

Shortly thereafter (up to 1 min) you will receive an email from SciScore with the notification that your report is ready. Obtain a zip file with your reports

  • Interpreting the report (for more information, see our documentation)

  • Re-run your methods section until you are happy with score

SciScore will return a report with three tables and an overall score between 1 and 10 and are based on rigor adherence and resource reporting completeness. Table 1 outlines whether certain rigor criteria were met. Table 2 displays all of the research resources (antibodies, cell lines, plasmids, etc.) used within a paper and whether enough metadata was provided to correctly identify each resource. Table 3 contains miscellaneous information, such as statistical tests and oligonucleotides; no information from this table is used in scoring.

Step 5

You can now return to your favourite Karger manuscript submission page and submit the report.pdf file as a supplemental file.

A note on the STAR table and the MDAR report: please use the report.pdf document for the Karger pilot, it is the most complete report. The STAR table and MDAR are generated with each run of the SciScore tool, but contain subsets of the same data that the report.pdf contains. Some journals request the MDAR report or the STAR Methods table as part of a final submission. To our knowledge none of the Karger journals request this. Please refer to your journal for more details.